


Something Stronger, Then?

by pennydreddful



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 03:59:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14252571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennydreddful/pseuds/pennydreddful
Summary: “You should hear him speak of you. And, god, you’ll certainly hear how angry he is with you,” Thomas took a sip of his rum, concerned.Current FlintHamilton, past unrequited SilverFlint, impending requiting and eventual SilverFlintHamilton ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Established Silver/Madi in the background.Set post-series by about a decade. Edit: by about five years.





	Something Stronger, Then?

The first time Thomas and Silver meet, James watches through the window, heart fully in his throat. If his eardrums could beat out a war march they would have. He swore he could feel the rush of blood boiling under the surface and pulsing within him when he killed, but now, in a peaceful part of his life, the only terror that could riot his bloodstream was the meeting of halves of his soul. He felt as if boiled from within.

 

Thomas is kind, eyes more lined than before but infinitely attentive and welcoming as he pours tea. Silver sighs gratefully, accepting a mug and settling in at their kitchen table. He feels like an intruder, knowing of the two seats there he must be in Flint’s. Still using the crutch Flint fashioned for him. Thomas’ beautiful face is rapt, taking in everything he can about the man behind the longest shadow lingering on his James. 

 

He knows that when he refers to the man he misses as Flint and Thomas snorts, they’ve loved the same man. Silver’s heart was shredded into thin, withering strips the day he reasoned with his truest love in the forest. He’s tried to weave it back together since, Madi’s deft fingers doing the work with him just as Thomas slowly collected and polished pieces of James. Silver had known then that the happy ending was not one where he played the part of lover. He had known he was purely, truly fucked when all that finally helped him pass to unconsciousness after sending Flint away (not sleep, god, that never came) was the conception that Thomas was kissing away lines and battle scars with an iron embrace around Flint. Until now, two decades had separated the two men at the table, demarcating the space between James McGraw and James Flint.

 

“John,” James heard, Silver’s familiar charming-a-wealthy-older-lady voice glimmering beneath the surface. He puffed his chest up to storm around the corner and expose Silver’s absolute snakelike _bullshit_ but stopped himself. “Please,” he heard, a quieter tone. “Just John.”

 

“No pirate king of Nassau?” Thomas prodded, so delighted to have this guest that James could tell he scarcely held back from peppering him with interrupting questions. For his part, Thomas’ mind swirled with them, from the mundane _When did he cut his hair?_ to the agonizing _What happened after Miranda?_ to his truest curiosity, _Why would you send him back to me, the whole of his heart placed before you?_

 

Silver snorted, sprawling a bit more like himself in the chair, fingering his mug into quarter turns on the wood. 

 

“No, that was your…” Silver raised an eyebrow, searching. “What do you call him? He was ‘Captain’ or ‘James, don’t’ to me, but perhaps we were a bit untraditional.”

 

James just stood at the window, schooled in holding his breath and ceasing the shifting of his feet. Clenching his fists around his gardening rake, he listened to the soft, baleful laugh he had followed to find Silver ever since the loss of his leg. It knocked him back, filling him and in the same stroke showing him the depth of absence he had known. Tears sprung up, unbidden and aching, but he was rooted to the wall of the house, knuckles white.

 

Thomas dragged his eyes over the table's wood grain before replying. 

 

“I never knew what to call him other than his name. Once and always. He was the man who fell in love with my glorious, compassionate, brilliant wife. He was the man who wanted to build something with me, and I the one who would have sold every dream I had so long as I could have _him._ And when he became the light in our darkness, the man we loved, he was still James. When my father told me James had been executed, I was in an asylum which I was to be grateful for—father ‘spared’ me James’ fate. At that point, I was nothing again, thrust back into darkness and solitude, this time without Miranda as confidante, as dear friend, as one of my loves,” Thomas said.

 

“And then she was Flint’s,” Silver supplied, absorbing another glimpse into the agony these three suffered. He thought of Madi, and how she understood, and how Silver returned the favor when her heart wandered into the past or simply had more to learn in the present. Their bed certainly never went cold and their children grew into dignified, curly-haired things before them both. Silver always thought of his ultimate commitment to Madi serving the dual purpose of uniting them in adoration and raw-nerved emotion while forcing him into real empathy for Flint. Once he understood, precisely, how it felt to hold two loves within himself, the understanding was intimacy. Even separated, even sending him back in time, Silver's acceptance sealed the space where daylight might pass between them.

 

“So I hear,” Thomas noted, quietly. “I envy them, the ten years they had. No matter what we three suffered—I was alone to steep in shame and cheated of goodbyes,” he paused. “I spent the first week not sleeping. When he came back to life. Well, I mean,” he gestured to their cozy home. “I’d check to see if he was real every half hour or so. I finally stopped when he got uppity about my stroking his hair to verify his existence. Only the James I loved would react to my justifiable fear with a haughty snarl and forget he’d done so in the morning. James said I didn’t wake until well past noon, but he’d just remained, whatever book he could reach in hand, and let me catch up.”

 

“I am truly sorry,” Silver said, clearly and with the same honesty as for when he’d wanted to spring across the fire and kiss the misery off of Flint’s face as he confessed. 

“You must know; he loved you. Throughout. I saw so clearly when I thought I’d never see him again, that every hideous thing he’d done, the monstrosity he descended into, it was grief. He loved you, every moment. That’s why…” Silver didn’t really need to finish. 

 

Thomas, ever a tactile creature, placed a pale hand over Silver’s, 

 

“He loves you,” Thomas said, quietly. “Ever so. I never met Flint, never saw him lose me. He was just James, scarred and changed but still mine. But the force of joy we shared did not deaden the loss of you. His partner. Losing you severed a part of him you made. Immeasurable elation, immeasurable deprivation.” Thomas finished his tea, rising. 

 

“I haven’t the faintest notion how he will react to your arrival, at first,” Thomas collected John’s empty cup as well.

 

“Something stronger, then?” Silver suggested, watching Thomas hawkishly. He was beautiful, and the refinement in his pedigree was clear through elegant, intentional motions. Silver smiled, seeing that the lighter-haired man took pleasure in entertaining. John also divined that this was a man who could hold scholarly shouting matches to meet James' literary temper, while Silver's relationship with gilded prose would forever be consigned to reporting that a crewman fucked the dairy goat and getting a heavily annotated  _Aeneid_ chucked at his head for the interruption. 

 

Thomas already had three cups and a bottle of rum on the counter, two generous pours returning with him to the table. 

 

“You should hear him speak of _you,_ 'John _fucking_ Silver,'" Thomas imitated the way James hissed out angry words with alacrity and Silver chuckled, "And, god, you’ll certainly hear how angry he is with you,” Thomas took a sip of his rum, eyes appraising Silver constantly without crossing to impolite. Thomas considered Silver, reconciling the image of flopping, agitating, fully infuriating  _John fucking Silver_  (as he'd known him from James' tales in front of their hearth) with the war-weathered and sharp-eyed person sitting before him, fully flesh. James had never said it outright, but Thomas had guessed he was this captivating. He imagined his idiot of a love trying to avoid those blue eyes aboard the  _Walrus_ and marveled at the stubbornness of captain and quartermaster. Months after their reunion, James can finally bear to say Silver's name without choking back tears and rattling with loss; the first time he does, Thomas knows across all those years and all that distance that James loved this man, unreservedly.

 

James shifted outside, anger roiling in his stomach but not flaring through his chest to launch an attack. He was reminded of his rage driving the _Walrus_ into a tempest, but this storm begun with Silver plucked out of time and presented on his doorstep, real and gorgeous and so goddamned satisfied with unmaking Flint.

 

Silver nodded, tense. He’d be angry, livid, even, if someone else had decided which of his loves he could live out. Perhaps it was why he hated to be alone with his decision to send James away.

 

Thomas, being Thomas, said, “John, I won’t abandon you to him. I’ll stay so he doesn’t murder you out of sheer belligerence, but then I think I shall leave you for a time. I’ve friends nearby; you’ve years to bridge.”

 

—

Indeed, two weeks ago, Silver had told Madi he knew where Flint and Hamilton were, that Flint did exactly as expected and broke them free to begin again. She saw his eyes in the low candlelight, and motioning that she had to put their youngest, a boy of five, to sleep, she did so and returned moments later to kiss him fervently. 

 

“I know,” she whispered, their foreheads resting together.

 

“Thank you,” he replied, holding her and marveling at her warmth. 

 

“Where?”

 

“In the Northern Colonies. Suppose they missed the cold,” Silver said, clutching the report containing the news in a sweaty palm, pulling her to bed for the hours before dawn.

—

 

“Thomas, that’s—“ Silver started.

 

“No, don’t. It’s not too kind. It’s right. If my _source_ is reliable," he sighs, "you fools never once spoke of what you felt.”

 

Silver’s mouth forms to begin protesting. He fish-mouths for a moment, floundering between _All we did was speak_ and _We didn’t need to say a word._ He settles on:

 

“Oh, fuck," he says instead.

 

James is in the doorway, scanning Thomas for any distress and squinting at Silver as if he were a mirage when he found Thomas to be smiling and safe. 

 

“You. How _fucking_ dare you,” James started, fists clenched. He stepped through the threshold, angling to pin him down.

 

Thomas is against James' chest, suddenly, with the third glass of rum. Flint cannot haul his eyes away from Silver, hostile glare level and unyielding. 

 

“James,” Thomas starts, bright eyes snapping to the source of the sound. “John made _this_ possible. The least you can do is be a decent host.”

 

James is pinned to his spot, looking between the two men. His chest rises and falls in petulant puffs, something Thomas graciously avoids naming, just this once.

 

“I have business in town. Do **not** be impulsive,” Thomas said it in a way that made Silver suddenly terrified to be left alone with a man he’d seen kill another with his bare hands.

 

“And don’t wait any longer, either,” he added, just to James, brushing past him imperiously after a quick kiss that James barely registered.

 

“John, a pleasure. We will speak more, I hope, but first you get to neutralize the powder keg,” Thomas called as he exited the house, taking the reins of their one horse from beside Silver’s and walking her out of the garden. 


End file.
